Welcome to CEO Insights. Gold newsI'm Marilyn de Guzman with investingnews.com. Today I'm speaking with Kevin Hull, CEO of Emergent Waste Solutions based in Vancouver. Hi Kevin. Hi. How are you today? I'm good. Thanks for being with us and speaking with me today. You're very welcome. I'm excited about this opportunity. Right. So, let's start our conversation with just uh you providing an overview of your company and your value proposition. Sure. Uh we are actually a commodities manufacturer.
Our unique value is that we use waste streams as our feed stock or our raw material if you will for the manufacturing of these commodities. Now, the commodities we make are carbon-based. They have a market. The market is growing year-over-year and internationally. And so, we have a very solid value proposition in that we have both a waste management side to the company where we can derive revenues from accepting waste and then we also have a sales side whereby we've manufactured a commodity. Now, that
represents a revenue stream as well. Thirdly, because of the contribution we're making environmentally, we also have a revenue stream from the sale of carbon credits. Now, no one of these revenue streams is uh floating the company by itself. So again, our uniqueness is that we're not dependent on one thing. We're not a company that, for example, explores for copper and we didn't find any. We are a company that has the ability to ride through changes in markets uh and come out still intact with a revenue stream.
Right. So, can you just provide uh like talk a little bit more about the technology, your technology and how it's unique from other waste conversion processes that's out there? Certainly uh we use what's called thermolysis and that is where you bring up a carbon-based material to a high temperature in the absence of oxygen. So no oxygen, no combustion, no fire. But that high temperature acts on that waste material to break it down at the molecular level. So we get three items that are separated. Uh a solid which is
a carbon, a pure carbon and a gas which has value. It's a it's a bio gas. And then we also get an oil. All three of these uh have value to them. And the unique thing about our technology is that we not only do the breakdown and do it very well, but we also keep these elements separated so they don't crosscontaminate. And that is a very key element in making pyrolysis or thermolysis a success. So for our investors that are probably not too familiar with the carbon um you know carbon based commodities um could
you talk about sort of the opportunities there? What's the market like and then your strategy for creating shareholder value? Certainly. So the carbon products we get first of all are a biochar. A biochar you can google that. It has grown exponentially over the last 5 years in terms of market awareness and market demand. We're sitting, for example, right now on a purchase order we're expecting to drop any day now where an entire train car load of our biochar going to a farming operation.
Biochar is put back into the soil. It literally sequesters for up to a couple thousand years greenhouse gases. So by virtue of making the biochar, we're as well earning those carbon credits because what we do positively in the environmental area. So that's the biochar. We can then take that biochar with our tech and we can refine it even further and make an activated carbon. That's what's in your Britta water filter or your HEPA air filter or in any number of other products and that has an existing mature market
that's growing year-over-year. The demand is growing and so that's activated carbon. We also did some work in the field of value ad and we're able to take our biochar and make grow medium blends which are unique to us and are formulated by two scientists. And we can then take our biochar as well and make a highly conductive carbon black which can replace in certain circumstances graphine. Also, if tires are our feed stock, we can extract the carbon black that went into the manufacturer of those tires for
reuse. And there's heavy demand for carbon black and for reclaimed carbon black. So, these are the carbon products. Oh, one more. If we pelletize our carbon product, our biochar for example, uh we can create bio coal. This is a coal substitute that has the same BTU value that burns far cleaner and has virtually no impact on the environment in its extraction unlike open pit coal mining. So we have carbon products that have good value that contribute environmentally and that earn us carbon credits.
So you have uh several projects I think um from what I from what I understand in the pipeline. Could you talk about these projects what the uh current progress is at that now at this time and your funding strategy for financing these projects? Sure. So, we have one project that is already underway. We already are a producer. We simply need our next round of funding to come into place and we will then ramp up production and go to full commercial production at this plant. So, it's not a pilot plant, it's not a test bed, it is
actually a commercial operation. Now, that plant is the smallest of the ones we've engineered. We have uh another bunch of potential projects that will use larger plants. We have, for example, another project here in British Columbia that we're specking out now. We have, well, two potential projects here in BC, I should say. We have one in northern Alberta that we're specking. We have one in Saskatchewan that we're just in the early stage of developing the business case for. And then we have a project
that is ready for funding in Ghana. and that is to take used mining tires and make them into a recaptured carbon black light diesel fuel etc. These things would have a domestic market there and export market from Ghana. That project is absolutely ready to go. We have another project in the Philippines that is ready for funding. Uh and then there are other projects we are contemplating that we haven't yet built the business cases for. But the business cases are transferable. What changes are the cost
bases. Whatever country we go to, uh labor is is going to be priced differently. Uh the support materials and raw materials may or may not be priced differently. In Ghana, for example, we have a letter of intent from Anglo Gold, Ashante, one of the larger mines or mining companies in the world saying, "We will supply you with the tires and we have an offtake agreement from a buyer of the reclaimed carbon black as well." So, it's a mature project. It's ready to go. Uh, now funding, we have a number of um
opportunities for funding. What we do want to look at is the stages of funding. So right at this time we are in a funding round for emergent waste solutions. We are entertaining uh four different shells trading here in Canada that are looking for a vehicle and uh like what they see of us. So a Shell uh should we reach an agreement with one uh then we would be on a fast track to making waste solutions a publicly traded company giving investors an exit strategy as a public company and also uh giving the company an
opportunity to return multiples potentially to our early investors. Um some of the projects we're looking at would qualify for a portion of government funding. Uh for example, in Ghana there are several uh international funds that are focused on environment and uh socially responsible projects and we qualify for those. So we're now in talks uh with a couple of those. So there are multiple avenues for funding. When we get the company to a stage where our current project is in full production, we have another project
underway, it will make funding the future projects much much easier. What's your um what's the next steps for the company? What are the plans for 2024? Well, we expect or hope uh forward-looking statements avoided here, but we expect that we will be a publicly traded company um by third quarter. We expect that we will uh cap out our current fund raise and give the company enough resources to bring our current plan into full production. And we expect to have at least one probably two plants
commissioned and the pro uh process of manufacturing those underway. So can you just sort of explain um the business model? I you know I think um you mentioned you know partnering with local governments and then um private companies as well like what's uh what's the business model in terms of some of your in your operations or are they different depending on location? Well they do differ on location but we do have three uh solid business models. The first of these is the joint venture model and that is what our current plant
is doing. Verent waste solutions does not own 100% of the revenue streams that will come from the current plant. Investors came in, they helped get that project underway. They take a ownership share of the revenue streams that will come from that plant. So that's a joint venture ship. We look for joint ventures when there's a piece of the whole project that is integral and yet we need to rely on somebody else to provide that. So looking at Philippines for example, there's an engineering company
uh based there in the Philippines that has done their homework on a variety of things related to waste conversion. uh good team of engineers, extremely uh forthright and and ethical people that we are very happy to be associated with. They will own one half of the revenue stream out of that project. But in turn, they're dealing with all the government issues, permitting, licensing, zoning, uh everything to do with the um environmental permits that we're going to need. Um being endorsed by their
environmental protection agency, uh dealing with the government people in office, so those who might be able to cause issues or problems for a Canadian firm coming in and setting up. So, this local firm is going to take an ownership percentage in the revenue stream of the project, but they're going to handle myriad things that as a Canadian company dropping ourselves into the Philippines, we wouldn't have a chance of uh local labor, for example, they're going to do the hiring. In fact, our vision there in
Philippines is met by our Filipino partner. Um, we intend to not displace the trucking industry, the waste holage industry. We're going to locate wherever that is currently brought to, and we're going to have a screening process that takes out the things we cannot process, the noncarbon based material, glass, rocks, um, metal. Uh, but we're going to use the workers who currently pick through the garbage dumps in looking for things of value. We're going to use those workers. We're going
to employ them. And we're going to provide them with housing and child care and medical. And in turn, we're going to have a workforce that we can count on. And that is all down to our partner there in the Philippines. and their vision for being socially responsible and contributing to the community in addition to dealing with waste in addition to running a profit at a facility. Interesting technology and then something I think that the world really needs more of in these days. Thank you for saying that. It's it's in
fact very true. Um, we established before we ever set up emergent waste solutions that if if left to their own, the governments are not going to do anything about climate change. Nothing substantial enough. We determined as entrepreneurs that we needed to have something that could contribute substantially to the fight against climate change emissions and to the general pollution, but it had to be profitable. It had to to work at the bottom line without relying on an annual government handout. So for example, if
you look at waste to energy here in Canada and especially British Columbia, all the waste energy projects are only working because they're getting a sweetheart deal from BC Hydro. When that deal stops, they're not profitable. We determined that if we're going to make an impact in this world, we've got to make being profitable, economically sustainable, a part of the equation as well. And that's where we're unique in the whole field of environmental technologies. Definitely a win-win. Thanks, Kevin, for
uh taking the time to speak to me today and explain your technology and your business uh you know value proposition. You're very welcome. I appreciate your professionalism in this. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks everyone for watching. Join us again next time for another engaging conversation on CEO insights. If you like this video, make sure you subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss future updates and interviews. See you next time. [Music]
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